


Flirting with Disaster

by herbailiwick



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, M/M, POV First Person, Season/Series 09
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-24
Updated: 2013-11-24
Packaged: 2018-01-02 12:27:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1056756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/herbailiwick/pseuds/herbailiwick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam knows he can't engage with Crowley while Crowley's in their dungeon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flirting with Disaster

If there's one thing I've learned, it's when to keep my mouth shut. In fact, I don't talk about plenty of things I _should_ talk about, that normal people find it okay to talk about. Like, "Hey, I'm a little down about such-and-such traumatic event, want to do something?" "I'm pissed off at you because of this awful pattern in the way we communicate, or because of something that doesn't apply to you at all that I know you wouldn't understand no matter how well you mean, so want to go away and leave me the hell alone?" Or, "Hey, that looks fun, you guys. Maybe. Can I join you?"

Because I don't really join in. It's not a whole lot better than it was a year ago at this time, or two years ago when I was driving around, just two years ago, to forget about Dean.

I'm lonely, still. But I know I have Dean, in a way I didn't know before the night I almost cured Crowley. It's my fault I can't talk about what's up with me. I just don't feel like I can. I've kept too many secrets, and now I'm like a giant secret, emphasis on giant. And I guess I'll never really get socialization right because I'm already over 30 and I just don't think there's much hope left for me to change, not while I'm so closed off.

I know when to shut my mouth, even if sometimes I don't know how to open it, even if I know what it's like to be lonely and hard to understand and a pathetic, demonic poison addict and just really a guy in need of so much stupid, normal help, so I'm not gonna talk to Crowley, I'm not gonna give him anything to latch onto.

Because if anyone's been sweet-talked by demons before, their whole life, it's me. I still have basically nothing except Dean, and I know that's my fault, I get it, but that doesn't change it. Crowley says nice things to me. He's got a survival instinct stronger than Lucifer and a charm capable of fooling Jody Mills, and Crowley may have started out our ally, slipping us the Colt we lost cause I wanted to sleep with _that_ enemy too, but now we've got years of opposition under our belts.

I can't let him engage me, because I'm not Kevin. I'm a hell of a lot easier to tempt, for Crowley. And he knows it. It's always me, you know? Who he focuses on. Taking Bobby's soul to keep me in line, cause I'm weak. Telling me he's an altruist, a man of integrity, a model of efficiency. Because I think it's true too, now that he's gone and pointed it all out. 

But he's also a sneaky bastard, a man from the pit I wish I didn't know so well, one of those beings who led and encouraged and comforted me when I was in grade school, maybe before.

He's the real reason Dean and Cas went to Purgatory. He tortured Meg, probably sexually assaulted her too because he's twisted and needs to be stopped and imprisoned just like Meg herself once was, and it doesn't matter how much I believe him when he says he likes me, Crowley has so much to atone for that I totally get why he hides behind big talk, even though he once cried about forgiveness in that church where I almost died for him and left the world better off but didn't manage it.

He's gotta open up again, or I can't risk engaging with him. He compliments me, kind of perversely, but he's gotta know I like it, that I could be his ticket to freedom if I'm not careful, just like I was Lucifer's, and I can't get this one wrong. First trying to kill him and disappointing Dean, then accidentally working with him and disappointing Dean, and then accidentally trusting him too much because he has a dirty mouth but a soft gaze? No way in the actual Hell I'm letting that happen.

And as any salesman knows, sex sells. That's all it is, a sale. Somehow he can smell the "romantically desperate" on me, or maybe it's just cause he read the books, or it's just that he's been spying, or talking to demons because, hell, who knows what locker room stories Ruby told.

Just because it's amusing, and flattering, and just because I want to hear more as much as I want him just to not even exist, that doesn't mean I can't do my job.

Thrilling as the idea of "getting all tough" and the idea of "putting the S-A-M into S-and-M" actually, honestly sound to me, like an adventure I shouldn't go on but just might anyway when he says them with that look, and as much as he has my attention when he jokes about "the sexy way" boys can be "poked" and his own "delicious" juices while I'm supposed to keep a poker face or muster up some strong disgust and I really just can't, he's not gonna get me to pull a bad move, not while I have Dean.

I wish it was easier to ignore the random compliments to my hair, or that time he said Dean and I were lucky to have our looks, the way he calls me Moose, which, what the hell, or the way he said I'm the Marnie to his Hannah, which I regretted looking into, but it's my job, and I'll do it, I'll keep him locked up and I'll keep him alive, until he helps us like he's supposed to. And then? Well, who knows.

Doesn't matter how sure I am he'll change; I'm not a great judge of character. Doesn't matter how he's made me blush before; sex sells. Doesn't matter he's older than I am, and that I'm still too naive for 30 despite my stint in the Cage; I ignored my mind's image of Lucifer for the better part of a year, and I'll do this too.

I know how to keep my mouth shut. If there's one thing you can count on about Sam Winchester, it's that he'll keep his mouth shut.


End file.
